Welladay...

[rolanni]

I was going to post a long discussion about the cost of books, all kines, the. . .duplicity of. . .certain publishers, and reader expectation brought about by a conversation with a bookseller friend this afternoon, after reading this article this morning.

I fear me this Pithy, Insightful post will not happen tonight. Perhaps soon.

In the next week, the following things are penned into the schedule:

1. Friday, meet with accountant after work; pick up car from shop

2. Saturday -- write or know the reason why

3. Sunday -- put together and email an InfoDump; Second Life podcast interview

4. Monday -- database wrangling and bookkeeping

5. Tuesday -- write?

6. Wednesday -- take Hexampuma to specialist in Portland to have his ear evaluated
and very likely operated on

7. Thursday -- Sharon gives presentation as part of Moonlighting panel after end of
day-job day

8. Friday -- fall on face.

9. Saturday and Sunday -- write, dammit

Comments

Rant Mode ON

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Sigh. There are several things...misaligned in that article. For one thing, Amazon is Macmillan's customer. Ebook readers are Amazon's customers. Amazon, in case nobody's noticed, is working very VERY HARD to make sure that ebook readers are its customers.

And, yanno, a bookstore yanking an author's book because the bookstore is mad at the author's publisher, is just the sort of thing that makes authors nuts. Authors get paid a percentage of cover price on books sold. If a bookstore isn't selling an author's book, the author is looking at a slender(er) payday six months to a year out.

I can see being cranky at Amazon over that. Especially if Amazon thought that, if it made authors crazy enough, they would force Macmillan to capitulate, which is one of many readings of why Amazon behaved in such an... untactful ...manner. Publishers don't listen to authors. Especially, publishers don't listen to authors about how much the publisher ought to sell books for.

So, yanno, asking Scalzi (for instance) how much ebooks ought to cost, over and over, is pretty likely to get a snippy answer. As John said himself, it doesn't matter what he thinks ebooks ought to cost. It's like the guy who comes up to you (generic auctorial you) at a con and says that he's never buying another one of your books because YOU put a giant turtle on the cover and he abhors giant turtles.

You (generic auctorial you) aren't likely to think, "Wow, what an insightful comment; I will forthwith get that dern turtle off my cover." No. What you're likely to think is, "Wow, there's somebody without even the semblance of a clue."

Rant Mode OFF

Um, sorry.

[spegasaur.livejournal.com]

Firstly, apologies. It wasn't my intention to cause irritation.

Secondly, one of the problems with the 'debates' on the Amazon vs Macmillan bust up is that there are a number of issues closely related - large publishing houses approach to epublishing, the $9.99 price point, Amazons blacklisting of Macmillan titles, and people tend to argue at cross-purposes as a result.

The reason I linked to the Teleread article is that it made an attempt to seperate out those issues, rather than concentrating on the $9.99 kindle ebook price, which (I feel) is a bit of a side show: there's plenty of evidence to show people are willing - even happy - to pay more than that for an ebook. Just look at Baen's $15 E-Arcs: I don't know how well they sell, but there's clearly a market for them. If that was all the debate was about, I doubt there would be anything like the anger towards Macmillan, and those supporting their stance, as there has been.

One point, though. You are, obviously, correct to point out that Amazon is Macmillan's customer, not the readers. However, under the agency model that will change, and the reader _will_ be the publisher's customer. And the (e-)reader is one group that the (large) publishers seem just as happy to... annoy... as Amazon is willing to annoy authors. OK, it's an order of magnitude difference: but no-one appreciates being ignored, or treated with contempt.

-Stuart

Re: Um, sorry.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

No, you didn't cork me off; Chris' article over on Teleread corked me off, and my rant was in (partial) response to it. I really shouldn't read the intertubes before I've had coffee.

However, under the agency model that will change, and the reader _will_ be the publisher's customer.

I'm not seeing this. The large publishers don't want to direct sell books; it goes against everything they've been doing. It's been obvious for years that traditional publishing is ailing; that the opportunity for, um, creativity exists at too many points along the chain, like a leaky pipe. The trouble is that everybody depends on the pipe, and nobody will take time to either fix the old one (not, I think, cost-effective, or, given the changes since, oh, World War II, reasonable) or lay a new one.

Part of what's making this so...interesting is the tension between the bigger publishers' being both unwilling and in a very real way unable to change, and the rate of actual change going on in the greater world.